IX. To Old Friends, Part I: Memory.

I dream about those I no longer speak to.

Old friends. Half-lit rooms.

Echoes of selves

flickering at the edges.

The dreams are vivid—always.

Time curdling in sleep,

a warm-spined eel in reverse,

slick with yesterdays,

muscling back

into rooms unruined.

Our coats still hang there, untouched,

like things we meant to retrieve.

Their fabric hums.

Their sleeves remember.

...

I’ve always been fascinated by consciousness—

that strange waltz between memory and dream,

the way the mind circles back

to where the heart once broke,

as if feeling what it couldn’t keep.

I stir, tangled in meaning.

Was I just recalling,

or were you dreaming of me too?

As if memory were a door we reached for

at the same time.

...

And even now,

in the faded seams of time,

it’s hard not to see you.

Not in shape,

but in weather.

A phrase I mouth like a prayer.

The tilt of a stranger’s head.

A mouth, ill-fitting,

wearing your laugh.

...

Some people die politely.

Others just step aside,

not gone,

elsewhere.

Living inside moments you’ll never see,

forever framing me.

...

In this plague of ruptured minds,

I would still fold time like linen

and hand you the hour.

Not for kindness.

Not for resurrection.

But because you'd know its scent.

That kind of knowing spores.

It burrows. It seeds.

And when I speak a line

no one else laughs at,

I feel it twitch—

the root of you,

stirring under the loam.

...

I’ve seen the past come dressed

in old sweaters:

still warm in the chest,

but strangling at the collar.

Did the thread shrink?

Or was it always too tight?

Memory is cruel like that:

Shapeshifter. Seamstress.

Tailor of ghosts.

She measures you in silk,

then hands you the rope.

I wear it.

Of course I do.

You,

the rootless tree,

flowering wherever I couldn’t follow.

The mirror that swallowed my face.

Must you be such an inhospitable ghost?

Some wipe their feet.

They knock.

Others crawl into my gestures—

how I slice my fruit.

How I name the moon.

I don’t go calling for the past.

It has its own way of showing up,

not to pull me back,

or reopen anything,

but maybe just to be seen—

not as something to fix,

but something I once loved,

and still do,

softly,

silently,

without demand.

...

Maybe that’s why you still find me in dreams.

Not out of longing—

not out of loss—

just a presence my sleep hasn’t learned to forget.

I hope I haunt you too.

Nothing dramatic.

Just the occasional pang

when the moon looks suspiciously beautiful.

For what it’s worth,

-Charlene Iris

One thought at a time.

One truth at a time. 

Because some epiphanies stay with you.